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Start With Social Media But Dig Deeper [INFOGRAPHIC]

Social media can open the door to a relationship with your brand and business. But if your engagement efforts stop there, you're missing the bigger space. Social technologies pose more opportunities for brands to engage their customers than ever before. Open social networks like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter are great for reaching new audience, but to truly cultivate deeper relationships with customers, you need to continue the conversation in a brand community. Posting the right content at the appropriate touch points and stages in the customer life cycle will drive organic word of mouth around your brand and turn customers into advocates. Take a look at below infographic by GetSatisfaction called Start with Social but dig deeper.

Click on image to enlarge

The customer lifecycle - As customers learn about, engage with, and promote brands, companies should know what to offer at each stage of the customer's journey.

Sharing is caring - The more social media followers you acquire, the bigger audience you have to share content with, solicit insight from, and invite into your customer community and marketing communications. Social networks in tandem with community can allow you to truly nurture deep relationships with your online audience.

Spreading the word - Devise a strong grassroots marketing plan to get the word out on social sites by encouraging advocates to share your brand's content their experiences with it.

Do this by -

Running a contest asking customers to share what they love most about your product.

Include share buttons on all your content.

Sending follow-up emails - once they've made a purchase, asking for public feedback.

Placing entry points to your community on your website, social channels and customer communications.

Building a word-of-mouth culture by reaching out to specific customers ask them to help answer relevant questions.

Just asking many customers are happy to help spread the word if they like your services.

Engaging your customers start with social, but it's just the beginning. To develop a deeper relationship with your audience, your brand must create a community to provide them with valuable content, resolution, and engagement. Only then do you start to build real relationships that will turn customers into advocates and onlookers into customers.

1 comment:

Great post Irfan, in particular you comment "Posting the right content at the appropriate touch points and stages in the customer life cycle will drive organic word of mouth around your brand" should be at the forefront of social dialog. It may take a bit of grooming to identify what your followers desire, but some should consider managing social media dialog similar to playing an instrument... most often good listening requires consistent practice.

I will go on to say that there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Every small business is different — the marketing plan and tactics for a Commercial Real Estate Broker are entirely different from those of a Chiropractor. However, the process of building a plan, sticking to it and applying the time and resources it needs is the common secret to success in marketing.